By Emma Whitford in Gothamist – Dozens of Crown Heights tenants and allies gathered for a candlelight vigil near the corner of Schenectady Avenue and Union Street last night, in solidarity with 55 families at 285 Schenectady and 1646 Union who will be evicted on October 1st—unless they agree to sign leases doubling, and in some cases tripling, their rents. In August, after months of tenant organizing, the New York State Supreme Court ruled in favor of the tenants’ landlord, Renaissance Realty Group, citing a loophole in the current rent laws that gives Renaissance the right to jack rents. “I’ve been living in this neighborhood for 26 years,” said Natasha Creese, who shares a three-bedroom at 285 Schenectady with three adult siblings, her 18-year-old son, and her five-year-old niece.
By Emma Whitford in Occupy The Bronx – Dozens of homeless New Yorkers and advocates rallied on the steps of city hall this afternoon to single out and condemn the NY Post’s recurring portrayal of the homeless as dehumanized, quality-of-life case studies, as well as the Sergeants Benevolent Association’s recent public solicitation of photographs ofhomeless people engaging in “quality-of-life offenses of every type.” “We’re here today because we’re disgusted by the treatment of homeless people in our city,” said Alyssa Aguilera, the Political Director for Vocal New York. “We’re tired of the criminalization and stigmatization of homeless people who are struggling, and need housing, and who need social services. Instead they are being targeted by the police.” According to the SBA, civilian documentation of the homeless is a valid response to those who exercise their right to surveil the NYPD.
By Edward McAllister in Reuters – A New York state court on Wednesday declined to release details of a grand jury investigation that led to a police officer being cleared of wrongdoing in the death of Eric Garner after his chokehold arrest in Staten Island in July last year. Lawyers for civil rights groups and New York’s public advocate office in June called for the release of the grand jury minutes including transcripts of testimony, exhibits and details of certain grand jurors to better understand the decision not to charge officer Daniel Pantaleo for Garner’s death. Garner was black and Pantaleo is white, and the case caused widespread protests last year. The lawyers did not establish a compelling reason for disclosure of the minutes, the appellate division of New York State’s Supreme Court said on Wednesday.
By Keegan Stephan in Animal New York – Over the last week, New Yorkers marked the one-year anniversary of Eric Garner’s chokehold death with over a dozen events and actions across the city, from banner drops, to rallies with victims of police violence from around the country, to a march with over 1,000 people leading to dozens of arrests. The actions kicked off last Monday with a march on Staten Island organized by NYC Shut It Down (NYCSID) and led by Erica Garner, Eric’s oldest daughter and founder of the Garner Way Foundation. “It’s important to keep bringing actions to Staten Island,” Erica told ANIMAL, “because the police still haven’t reformed out there.” The march hit many locations directly connected to Eric Garner’s story, from the courthouse where the Grand Jury failed to indict Officer Pantaleo, to the NYPD’s 120th Precinct, where Pantaleo still works, to the spot where Eric died, just seven blocks away.
By Ellen Brait in The Guardian – Members of the Apache tribe stood chanting in a circle with drums and posters in the center of New York’s Times Square on Friday, to protest against a bill that will hand over land they hold sacred to a foreign mining corporation. Times Square was the latest stop for activists from the Apache tribe who are travelling across the United States to battle for Oak Flat and to draw attention to a bill introduced by Arizona representative Raúl M Grijalva to repeal the decision to hand the land over to Resolution Copper. A fine-print rider was added to December’s National Defense Authorization Act that gave the title of Oak Flat to Resolution Copper Mining, co-owned by multinational mining conglomerates Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton.
By Rebecca Nathanson in Waging Nonviolence – Thanks to the 1971 Urstadt Law, New York State, rather than New York City, controls the city’s rent laws, which expired on June 15. These laws include vacancy decontrol, which allows rent-stabilized apartments to be destabilized once they are vacant and the rent reaches a certain threshold. However, the city does have one means of managing its rent-stabilized apartments: the RGB, which votes on yearly rent increases for stabilized apartments. This year’s vote was scheduled for late-June. The combination of the rent laws expiring and the RGB vote resulted in a period of heightened mobilization for tenant organizations and provided an opportunity for them to come together to pressure both the city and the state in two separate but related struggles.
By Nathan Tempey in Gothamist – In the two weeks since white supremacist Dylann Roof allegedly murdered nine people in a South Carolina church, activists, politicians, and everyday anti-racists have taken up the cause of removing Confederate flags and monuments from the public landscape. The campaign is a noble one—the flag was, after all, created explicitly for Southern white people to start a war to preserve slavery, and Roof posed with it in photos before reportedly trying to incite his own race war—but for some liberal New Yorkers, it has served as a self-congratulatory reminder that the South is a uniquely racist place with a disgusting past that has nothing to do with them.
By Christina Carrega-Woodby in NY Daily News – Two Occupy Wall Street protesters who were pepper sprayed by a high-ranking cop have settled their lawsuits for $60,000 each, the Daily News has learned. Chelsea Elliott and Jeanne Mansfield, whose payout is the most awarded to any individual Occupy Wall Street protesters, sued the city and Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna in Manhattan Federal Court for blinding them with the spray during a protest on Sept. 24, 2011 near Union Square. “I’m gracious and thankful that we were able to hold them accountable. Freedom of speech is important,” Elliott told The News. Elliott, 28 of San Francisco and Mansfield of Boston learned about the settlement after the city quietly filed last week. “It’s crazy watching [the video] now, seeing it all happen again, it was surreal and strange,” said Elliott.
By John Spina and Ben Chapman in Ny Daily News – The brigade of men and women who keep the city’s schools clean are calling on Mayor de Blasio to end a two-tier system which, they say, leaves thousands in their ranks underpaid. Under the system, about 800 of roughly 5,000 cleaners earn a base $23.85 an hour, while the rest, doing the same work get about five dollars less. A bureaucratic loophole is to blame, union reps and workers said in front of City Hall Wednesday. The lower paid workers were brought on by private contractors, while their higher paid counterparts were hired directly by the schools. None of the workers are city employees.
By Christopher Robbins in Gothamist – A Black Lives Matter march in Harlem to honor the nine people murdered in the mass shooting in South Carolina ended last night with several arrests and one man being hospitalized following an altercation with police. After dozens of people gathered outside a state office building on 125th Street for a vigil for the members of Emanuel A.M.E. Church who were shot and killed by a white supremacist in Charleston, demonstrators began marching and chanting through the streets of West Harlem. Near the intersection of 104th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, police tackled and arrested a young woman. A short while later, 27-year-old Christen Conyers was arrested and charged with felony assault of a police officer, resisting arrest, two counts of disorderly conduct, obstructing vehicular traffic, and harassment in the second degree.
By Araz Hachadourian in Yes Magazine – A recent study revealed that nearly half of people between the ages of 13 and 22 have experienced online harassment. Of those surveyed, one-third did nothing when they saw someone else being bullied. It’s an issue the members of the historically Latino Pregones Theater in the South Bronx, New York, saw in their community. So they wrote a play about it—and not just any play. They used a tradition of avant-garde theater to make sure that audience members leave better prepared to take action when they see cyber-bullying take place in their lives. The play is part of a program called “Pregones Emotions,” a blend of traditional theater, improv, and audience participation that the group started performing with local middle schools in 2006.
By Monica Morales in Pix11 – Tenants, advocates and lawmakers camped out overnight Thursday outside the office of Governor Andrew Cuomo to protest the state letting housing regulation laws expire, impacting millions of New Yorkers who have rent stabilized apartments. Protesters have a powerful allies with them in the protest– Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams and several council makers. Many there are sleeping on the streets–to show the growing frustrations that millions of New Yorkers are feeling right now. Meantime the Mayor and the Attorney General held a joint press conference about busting bad landlord under a new taskforce created to protected tenants of rent stabilized apartments across the city. One of the first landlords arrested ran a building on Union Street. He allegedly endangered the health of his residents–including a six-year-old girl.
Newsletter Arctic drilling, Asian Pivot, BXE, Climate Justice, Criminal Justice and Prisons, fast track, Freedom of Speech, Gas, Housing, Inequality, Net Neutrality, New York City, Pipelines, Police violence, Pope Francis, Privacy, Racial Discrimination, Racism, Rikers, Shell Oil, sHellNo!, South Carolina, Terrorism, TPP, Wars and Militarism By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org
June 20th, 2015
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese for Popular Resistance. Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report writes that “No justice, no peace” is “a vow by the movement to transform the crisis that is inflicted on Black people into a generalized crisis for the larger society, and for those who currently rule.” In reality, given the violence being inflicted upon people, particularly people of color, whether directly or indirectly through rising poverty, unemployment, homelessness, lack of access to health care and more, and the government’s failures to address these crises and listen to the people, disruption is a necessary element of political change. In 1968 the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke outside a prison in California where people were being held for protesting the Vietnam War. In the speech he drew the connections between the Civil Rights movement and the peace movement against the Vietnam War. Today we see the links between racism, inequality, imperialism, militarism and ecocide and his comment on that day continues to ring true: “There can be no justice without peace. And there can be no peace without justice.”
By Christopher Mathias in Huffington Post – Carl Stubbs, 63, stood outside New York City Council chambers Wednesday in anticipation of the council’s vote on the Fair Chance Act — a bill that would delay when many of the city’s private sector employers can ask job applicants about their criminal history. “I feel [that] being black, having a felony, you don’t get hired,” he told The Huffington Post. “I have had a felony for over 30 years.” Stubbs, who’s also an activist with the group Voices of Community Activists Leaders (VOCAL-NY), wanted the bill to pass because it could improve his chances getting a job. “I would love to go back to work,” he said. Earlier, Piper Kerman, author of the memoir-turned-hit-Netflix-series Orange Is The New Black, offered her support of the bill.
By Alex Ellefson for Waging Nonviolence. Housing advocates urged New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to declare a state of emergency if regulations protecting almost 1 million affordable apartments are allowed to expire. Lawmakers in Albany have only four days to renew the rent laws and tenant rights groups called on Cuomo to accept nothing less from the state legislature than an overhaul of the current rules. “So many people in my neighborhood have been pushed out and evicted because of these weak rent laws,” Flatbush Tenant Coalition member Jean Folkes said during a rally outside City Hall on Thursday. “Brooklyn is becoming more expensive than Manhattan. They are coming to take it away from us. I’m begging Governor Cuomo, ‘Do the right thing.’” New York City Council members who attended the rally said they are willing to take control of the city’s rent-regulated apartments if state legislators fail to produce stronger protections for tenants.
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